SQL Server Reviews

Activity Monitor and Dynamic Management Views

After reviewing a client's Microsft SQL environment, I have been able to setup specifics alerts and jobs in SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) to definitely show them where they are experiencing network latency, disk latency, memory pressure, etc., etc.  I have done this type of performance review for over 20 clients in the last 5 years

When reviewing SQL processes it would be great if all of the local processes on the SQL server were marshaled to a remote SSMS client.

I have been using Microsoft SQL Server since 6.0

WMI configuration

Setting up Microsoft SQL server performance alerts and jobs on a single server or in a Cluster is very straightforward. I typically start off looking at the following:

• Batch Request/Sec
• Buffer cache hit ratio < 96%
  
• CPU Utilization  > 80 % sustained
  
• Compilation/Sec
• Re-compilation/Sec
• Page Life Expectancy (PLE)
• User Connections
• Lock Waits / Sec: _Total
• Process Lock/Block By

My objectives are to provide a baseline to determine database growth pattern to ensure capacity planning, stability, bottlenecks, etc., etc.

I'm a web developer, and I use SQL for the backend.

The most valuable aspect of the solution is its ease of use.

It's a pretty stable solution.

We found it to be quite scalable. 

While using it, we really didn't experience any pain points. It doesn't need any additional features. 

I have a couple of years of experience with the solution so far. 

The stability and performance are good. It doesn't crash or freeze. it's not buggy. there are no glitches. It's pretty reliable. 

The scalability has been good. If a company needs to expand it, it can do so.

I've never used technical support. I can't speak to how helpful or responsive they would be. 

I'm not sure which version of the solution I'm using. 

I'd rate the solution at a nine out of ten. We've been satisfied with its overall capabilities in general.

We primarily use the solution to store databases. 

Since MongoDB, we have come up and there are lots of tools that do enhance the database management system or keep an eye on our data. People can easily access it. 

The solution is stable. It's reliable. 

The initial setup is simple. 

MongoDB is a bit better. A traditional database system, like the SQL Server, is failing to catch up.

You need an experienced person to use that piece of technology so that you can store everything in a logical manner. We'd like it to be easier to store in a logical manner.

The scalability could be better. 

We've been using this solution since 2012. It's been a while at this point. 

It's not scalable. It hinders your performance as it's slow in nature and you need experienced people to work on it. That is why it's not very scalable.

We currently have ten to 15 users on the solution. 

At this time, we have no plans to increase usage. We are focusing more on MongoDB.

We don't have any experience with Microsoft technical support. Therefore, I wouldn't be able to rate how responsive or helpful they are.

We did not previously use a different solution. We are currently moving towards MongoDB, however.

The installation is easy, especially since the new version has come up. Now, with the latest versions, installation is easy.

I cannot remember the time it took to complete the installation.

Earlier, we had to bring in a technical team, however, our own technical team is quite experienced now. They can now do it themselves.

We pay a yearly subscription fee. 

We use both cloud and on-premises deployment models. We're using the latest version of the solution. 

I'd recommend the solution to other users and organizations. If there are people who can't afford MongoDB or if an organization doesn't want to migrate to MongoDB, it's important to keep in mind the users would have to learn the fundamentals of the SQL server first. Knowledge of it is a necessity.

I'd rate the solution at a six out of ten.

On-premises

We use a tool called Tosca for automation and all the automation artifacts we are saving are on the SQL Server.

The solution is easy to use and provides similar features to other competitors.

SQL Server could improve by increase the performance, it cannot handle large amounts of data. I did not find any additional features compared to others solutions.

I have been using this solution for a few years.

The solution is stable.

We have not scaled the solution extensively, but I do not foresee any problems.

We have been using Hadoop and Spark.

The installation and configuration are straightforward.

We have a team of three people doing the backend maintenance and application support for this solution.

We did not encounter any issues that we would need support. 

I would recommend this solution to others for small operations. For bigger applications with large amounts of data and a lot of users, I would not recommend it.

I rate SQL Server a six out of ten.

On-premises

We primarily use the solution for recording transactions and information related to the reservation of a service. 

The product is very stable.

It offers very good documentation. When there are some little issues, it's always very easy to go into the documentation for troubleshooting purposes. There's just so much documentation on hand and a really great community around the product that is very helpful.

It's a very complete product.

We've found it to basically be pretty problem-free.

The integration with other products has always been quite good.

The security of the product has never given us any issues.

We're quite satisfied with the solution. There aren't any outstanding features we would like to add.

The interface could be updated to make it slightly more user-friendly.

We've been using the solution for more than ten years. It's been a while. It's been more than a decade at this point.

The solution is very stable. there are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. it's excellent.

We haven't really scaled the solution all that much. At the moment, we have measured the scalability in a horizontal way. When we needed to have more installation and more capacity, we split the database into a different SQL Server instance.

In the future, we'll likely need to consider scalability more. We are also moving in the last two years, also to a different architecture from a monolithic to a more microservice architecture. Maybe the scalability can be more easily handled in the applications that are talking to each other and leaving the database out of the equation.

While end-users are hard to quantify, I can say that likely half a million users have come through our system for transactions.

In the near future, we will continue to use the solution. We might use it for the next four or five years, although it is hard to say.

We've always been able to rely on the fantastic documentation and great community around the product in order to troubleshoot problems. It's very easy to fix issues as they arise due to the public knowledge available to everyone.

We've mostly always used this solution. Last quarter, we moved a little bit to a NoSQL database. We have done a little experiment on Cassandra however, previously, it has always been on SQL Server.

We're considering moving away from the solution right now and trying something new. The owner of the company wants to experiment with other technologies and see what is out there, which is why there is talk of change. However, it's not a reflection on this product, which has been largely quite good.

The initial setup is not overly difficult. It's pretty straightforward. A company shouldn't have any issues with the process.

We have 12 technical people on our team that can handle the implementation.

The last version we used is 2015 if I'm not mistaken. We don't jump immediately to the latest version due to the fact that, usually, we look for stability. We make the move to the next version in case of some integration or limitation. We prefer not to move onto something that might have bugs or glitches that need to be patched. It's more secure for us that way. 

I'd recommend the solution to other companies.

I'd rate the solution at a ten out of ten. It's doing exactly what we need it to do. We've very happy with it.

On-premises

• Effectiveness in a production environment
• New features test

Besides that, SQL Server has become very expensive like Oracle. Its stability delivers performance and usability.

• SSMS
• SSIS
• Reporting services
• FCI clustering
• AlwaysOn
• Basic availability groups.

I would like a mature real-monitoring built in into SSMS, even a trace file analyzer.

Less than one year.